


Familiar

by BlueMoonHound



Series: no halo [5]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Memory Loss, voidfish static
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-23 04:04:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13181979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueMoonHound/pseuds/BlueMoonHound
Summary: Then he finds his name, and his name was Davenport. He feels like he's found his name before, but right here, right now, he's found it again, and that's what matters. It's sturdy, like an outcropping at the top of a waterfall. He's afraid it will be chipped away, bit by bit, just like everything else, and succumb.





	Familiar

**Author's Note:**

> exploring the edges of Davenport's statickey years.

Davenport is aware of the static.

That's a solid fact – He's been aware of the static. At first, it was the only thing he was aware of. He would stare at the ceiling, struggling to wrap his mind around anything at all. Failing. Nothingness furiously ate at his thoughts, not allowing them to surface.

Then he finds his name, and his name was Davenport. He feels like he's found his name before, but right here, right now, he's found it again, and that's what matters. It's sturdy, like an outcropping at the top of a waterfall. He's afraid it will be chipped away, bit by bit, just like everything else, and succumb.

He takes hold of his name, and he holds on tight.

It's like waking up from a trauma injury-- he regains his senses, one by one. First, he's Davenport. For a while, that was all, and he decided that was okay, he is Davenport.

Then someone was singing. A soft voice. It's like a piece of semi-solid land has connected with his name, and wedged itself firmly onto the landmass, safely away from the edge. The edges clip with static, but it's mostly clear. Objects move around. The singing stutters, stops. He listens to whoever it is walk around the room, listens to their breathing. He's not sure who it is, but he doesn't feel unsafe around them. He wants to get up, to hug them. To protect them. They're weeping, softly, he can hear their breath hitch.

He finds that he can't do those things. He can, however, feel the surface below him-- it's soft, and warm. His tail – yes, he has a tail, he realizes, a tail and mobile ears, so he must be a gnome- yes, he's a gnome, of course he's a gnome – is a little cramped under him, the tip hanging off the surface he's lying on. It must be a bed, he realizes. The sheets are fairly low quality. Unfamiliar. Of course they're unfamiliar, he decides, because the only thing that's familiar is the static. (Unfamiliar things are like ice on the river. He can't know if its safe to touch them, not yet. Not till the waterfall freezes, till the static goes away.)

He decides he must have been cursed. (He feels like he's missing even parts of his name, he's still got his surname but – he's clinging to the edges of what he knows and all that is is Davenport.)

Davenport opens his eyes. There's a ceiling above him. He tries to sit up and finds that he doesn't know how, which is the most frustrating thing ever because he knows he learned how to sit, he – he-- he can't even remember his – Does he have family? Where is he from??

“Davenport,” He yells, because, he discovers, it's the only word his mouth lets him say. Static frays the edges of his vision. He struggles, and ends up turning on his side. That's a start.

Some parts of the rest of the world are full of static. A statickey box. A statickey poster, though not all of it is glitched out – just the sky, oddly enough. It flickers lavender for just a moment before he realizes he's had a headache this whole time as it intensifies and he turns away.

The door opens, and in comes a woman with white hair and plain clothes. “Davenport, you're awake! Are you alright? I heard you shout.” She looks worried.

Davenport blinks at her. She knows his name. He supposes that's the only thing to know about him. He's a gnome named Davenport. He doesn't even know his own _age_. He blinks again, this time in the hopes of willing away tears, because this is too much. It's all too much, he doesn't know what's going on and it _sucks_.

“Davenport,” he says, because he still can't get himself to say anything else.

“That is your name,” the woman says. She chews her lip. “I'm Lucretia. We were friends before… before.”

There's several things Davenport wants to say. He wants to say, _what happened?_ He wants to say, _Friends?_ He wants to ask who she really was, because friends feels like a simplification. The words fizzle before they can surface enough to be spoken, and his tongue feels heavy in his mouth. His headache intensifies again, and he scrunches his eyebrows together.

“Davenport,” he manages, again, and it sucks because the worried look on her face intensifies. He doesn't want her to be worried. Something strictly paternal wells in him, but he- he's useless, he's completely fucking useless. _He doesn't even know who she is._

“O- oh, Davenport, don't cry, I'm sorry,” Lucretia approaches him. “Do you want to sit up?”

He manages a nod, and it hurts.

Lucretia slides her arm under him and sits him up against the wall. His feet just barely hang over the edge of the bed – it's a human-sized bed, he realizes, and he wonders if it's hers. It must be. It takes that little bit of urging for him to figure out how to work the muscles in his back and torso again, and he rearranges himself. He moves his fingers, making a fist and then relaxing his hand. Blinks. Licks his lips. Wiggles his ears, just a little, to make sure he can control them. Grimaces.

“I'll--” Lucretia stutters. “I will take care of you till you can do it yourself, okay? Whenever that is. However long it'll take. I had to take care of Taako for a few days, too. He's got a home, now. It'll be alright.”

Who is Taako? It's not a question he can ask out loud and he knows it. Trying to attach any meaning to the name 'Taako' makes his mind fizzle and he brings his fingers up to rub on his temples. The pain there hasn't slowed down since it started.

“Does your head hurt? I suppose I shouldn't talk about that, should I?” She laughs, and it's an unhappy sound. Davenport just nods. His head does hurt.

“I'll be right back. I have some painkilling potions. Nothing too strong.” She leaves, and Davenport is alone in the room again. It's alright, but he misses her voice, because it's familiar and it's not as statickey as everything else that's familiar. It's another thing to hold on to, like his name. He looks around the room, absorbing the details, hoping this will become familiar too. (because whatever happened to him, he desperately needs _familiar_ right now.)

Lucretia gives him a mug of something warm and soothing. He can't hold it, his hands shake too much, so she helps him to drink. It fogs his mind, but the pain goes away entirely. The dizziness fades. It's better.

He rolls onto his side and goes back to sleep.

 

He realizes that the void in his brain is definitely a lack of memory as Lucretia leads him through everyday activities – he re-learns how to walk, how to shave, how to brush his teeth. He re-learns how to climb a set of stairs. He tries reading, and gives up after his third attempt. It hurts too much. He relearns the flavor of coffee (and cringes), the flavor of bread and crackers and various soups, whatever Lucretia made that day. He relearns how to tie a tie, how to button a shirt, and hopes that maybe he can live on his own sometime.

But there's one problem – he still can't speak. He can't think very well, and all the things he's learned have been muscle memory, recalled. The closest he's gotten is humming. He hums along with Lucretia as she mixes carrots into a stew.

“It's okay, Davenport,” She says out of the blue. “You can – you can stay with me. It'll be fine. We'll make it work.” There's a sadness in her voice that he wants to wish away.

“Davenport,” he says, because there's not much else he can do.

 

She first gets easier to look at when she comes back one day looking different, looking older. She's still fuzzy, but that makes him notice it – he's not vision impaired after all, she was just part of the static. She looks older, and sadder. She's crying. She's bleeding. She doesn't seem aware of these things.

Davenport finds himself reaching up, grabbing her hands. Pulling her to her knees. “Davenport,” he insists, trekking out of the room, fetching a rag from under the sink, getting it damp. He cleans the cut on her face out, wipes blood from her hands. She slips her bag from her shoulder, her staff clattering down next to it, and hiccups, choking on a sob.

(Her staff is sobbing, too.)

“Davenport?” he asks, a hand on the unmarred side of her face.

“Oh, Davenport,” Lucretia sighs. She takes the rag from his hand. “I- I'm sorry, I'll be okay.”

She struggles to her feet, stumbles from the room. He lets her go.

 

The lucidity Davenport had on his first day awake becomes rare, not just because he often finds himself needing that potion Lucretia gave him to be any sort of active or positive, but also because everything he runs into is faded and fuzzy, especially with Lucretia and the thing in the tank, Lucretia and the group she gathers around herself and their conversations. He finds himself leaving rooms a lot, balance off, one hand to a wall and his tail swishing fruitlessly in an attempt to hold his center. Even being one room over doesn't help, though(and she never lets him go much further), and it's not until Lucretia brings him to the moon base that he has a moment of true lucidity again-- surfacing from a fugue of pain and static in a room that is completely, entirely devoid of static and also built for a gnome.

He steps through the door, feeling more steady than he has in years, and then turns, and realizes even Lucretia isn't as clear and easy to focus on as this room. She made him an entirely new room, something with no pain. Less familiar than anywhere he's been. He takes a deep breath, feeling steady, turning back into the room.

He pokes around for a minute – there are clothes in the closet (mostly suits, they look like they're his size) and some crackers in a jar on a small table on one side. There's a water pitcher on the nightstand and even a desk with a piece of charcoal and a pen in a little holder. The bedsheets are blue.

“Thank you,” Davenport says, surprising even himself. Lucretia gasps, and hiccups, and when he turns around, she's crying.

 

Things get a little better-- at first, just because he has a place to go when things are overwhelming. The room Lucretia gave him is soundproofed, he discovers when she's having a yelling match with a worker and he shuts the door and the sound is so thoroughly muffled he can barely tell there's noise on the other side of the wall. It feels vaguely magical. Has he ever been magical? Davenport stops considering the possibility that he might have been magical when it brings the static back to his brain.

Second, when Lucretia leads him through the halls of the place she's been keeping him – a place in the sky, on the moon, or something, and to an elevator, leads him to the basement. To a tank which makes him dizzy.

Lucretia wipes tears off his face. “Davenport-- just a moment, it will get better, drink this--” and she thrusts a small vial of black ichor into his hand. It doesn't look like the drink she usually gives him, and doesn't feel or taste like it either – in fact, it doesn't taste anything like he's expecting, and for a moment Davenport is flooded with memories. Remembering an experience, as it's been years since Davenport recalled anything at all, but the static clears a little, and in its place is a war, and he can remember a room, and Lucretia's face becomes a little clearer, a little easier to comprehend. He doesn't make an immediate connection, doesn't remember her from before waking up in her room, but she's a little less nauseating, and for that he's thankful.

“Davenport,” he says, and Lucretia takes the vial from his shaking hands.

“Davenport, can you remember the war? I can do yes or no questions.”

He nods. He doesn't trust himself to form words, and in most situations he just _can't_ , anyway.

“Can you hear me when I say Bureau of Balance?”

Yes, yes he can, that's clearer than the war-- the war is fuzzy and foggy on the edges. He nods a little more vigorously this time, and his head spins. Lucretia puts a hand on his shoulder to steady him.

“Can you remember -” her voice turns to static. He puts his hands over his ears.

“Davenport!”

“Okay,” She says. She sounds resolute.

Davenport turns back to the tank. The creature within it feels familiar too-- he puts a hand against the glass. He's just barely tall enough to reach. It returns the gesture, and it sings.

He leans against the glass.

“Do you want to join my organization, Davenport?” Lucretia says. “You could make coffee if you liked. Hm. Well, I would ask you what you wanted, but you can't even answer me.”

Davenport nods at her. Making coffee sounds better than sitting at his desk and drawing circles. (sets of twelve. Sets of twelve. He's not sure why. It triggers the static sometimes, and then he turns the page and draws dots. Stars. The sky is nice. She doesn't let him outside much. Maybe he could ask her for a magic window. He can draw a window, he thinks.) It sounds better than the days someone says something he can't quite understand through the fog and he gets irrationally angry, better than the days he doesn't even get out of bed. It's not much, but it's something.

 

She gives him a bracer. He spends ten minutes examining it, secured neatly around his right arm. Does she know what hand he used to write with before whatever it was that happened? He runs his fingers along the insignia. He does pick his pen up with his left hand, when he decides to draw. He never really thought about it-- it was just what he did.

Lucretia shows Davenport how to use the coffee machine. He learns what her preference for coffee is. He hangs out in the kitchen after that, remembering when they lived in that little apartment and it was just them.

He finds a box with a green leaf on the label and holds it up. “Davenport?”

Lucretia's eyebrows shoot up. “Do you want some tea?”

“Davenport.”

“I'll put on the kettle.”

Davenport opens the box. It smells nice inside, fresh and sharp. He tries to read the label unsuccessfully.

The flavor turns out to be the same as the smell. Davenport relaxes in the comfort of the kitchen, his tail gently swishing, hands wrapped securely around the warm porcelain.

 

Davenport learns who Taako is. Taako is an elf. Taako is an elf in a pair of very short jean shorts and thigh-high socks, wearing a long violet robe and holding an umbrella. He has a space between his teeth when he smiles, a smile that feels forced, even to the gnome. He's accompanied by two others, Magnus and Merle, a human and a dwarf. He can tell Lucretia knows them by the way she sits, like she's holding something back. They don't know her, though.

They're almost as hard to look at as Lucretia was when he first met her. In fact, it's rather hard to focus with them in the room. Their voices are relaxing, and distracting.

Maybe they have the static too. That's what makes the most sense.

“Right away,” he manages to say, when she asks for the orb. She'd taught him about the relics, about destroying them. He's been doing the best he can.

(and maybe, just for this _one_ interaction, he can seem somewhat normal.)

He drops the act later-- it's too tiring. These people have the static too, and they might just understand.

 

The first relic that the reclaimers collect for Lucretia is the occulus. It's a small, plain monocle almost completely surrounded by static. Having it in the same room as him makes him immeasurably nervous – and it whispers, taunts him. Says things that are filled with static words. He can feel Lucretia's eyes on him as he walks in, so he straightens his back. Out of the corner of his eye he watches the guards reappear out of the destruction room. It doesn't quiet till he retreats to his own.

He's glad to be rid of it.

 

Lucretia gets worse. She spends more nights alone in her office, working. He brings her water on long nights. Sometimes, she asks for a cup of coffee. He catches her crying, or drunk, or both, several times.

One night she stops him at the door. “Davenport, how are you holding up?” She asks.

“Davenport,” he says, with a shrug. He makes an internal joke about how he can't think of anything else to say. He frowns at her. “Davenport?”

“I- I'll be okay, I'm just. Well, the world is ending, Davenport, and I'm the only one who can stop this. And it's a lot of pressure.”

He walks over to her chair and puts a hand on her knee. “Davenport.”

Lucretia leans over and hugs him. “I'm so sorry, Davenport,” she mumbles. “I made so many mistakes. I'm sorry.” It's several minutes before she finally lets him go, and when she does he decides to plop himself down next to her chair and stay there. She doesn't tell him to leave.

The company is nice.

 

He does make a fool of himself a few times, but acting cheerful makes Lucretia seem happier, and a happy Lucretia is so rare these days. Or at least, it seems fine-- till he enters the room at the candlenights party and everything is not good, and it's not happy.

He found the outfit in his closet. He isn't entirely sure why Lucretia thought he would like it, if indeed she was even the one who left it there, but as it turns out he loves it. It's so ridiculous, it tickles him.

“Davenport, read the room!” Lucretia hisses at him. He's a little taken aback-- Lucretia never acts angry with him. He droops.

“Davenport.” the inflection is as close as he can get to ' _I'm sorry_ ' with his annoying one-word vocabulary. He looks around the room – the statickey boys must be heading out on another mission. Before they go, though, Taako turns around, and starts talking to him like he's a dog.

“Wait real, quick--” he whistles “--I got a macaroon for ya boy.” Whistle. “Open up, Davenport.”

Davenport lifts the visor on his silly knight armor. “Davenport.”

Taako drops a macaroon into Davenport's visor and he eats it. It's elderflower-static flavored. He chews it for a minute.

“It's davenport flavor, just like you like,” Taako says. Davenport doubts that he tastes like elderflowers and static-- static, maybe, but he doesn't remember ever eating elderflowers. He finds himself unoffended by the ridiculousness of the situation. After all, Taako has never known him as _not_ ridiculous. What few moments are not ridiculous in his presence? The time when Lucretia came back crying from wonderland and he cleaned her face? The days when he wakes up on time to find Lucretia passed out in her office with an empty bottle of wine, and gets her a pitcher of water? Around the boys, even when he spoke more than his own name it was silly. (It's the most he can do. She's helped him so much.)

“mmmmDavenport,” he says.

When he returns to his room, when he strips off the stupid costume and pulls on his nightclothes, his mind keeps lingering on the macaroon. Why had it tasted like that? Why was it so familiar? Familiar was something he could rarely enjoy.

Lucretia turns in early the next morning and only sleeps for a few hours. Davenport decides to take that time to draw a window. He tries his best.

It takes a bit for him to get across what he's trying to say with the window picture, but when he finally does, Lucretia obliges immediately.

“Happy candlenights, Davenport,” She smiles. Then she sighs, and turns her head away.

“Davenport.”

 

Re-learning is a talent of his.

The first thing Davenport re-learns after he drinks the baby voidfish's ichor is, of course, the century, because Lucretia recites it to the five of them, as if she had it memorized. The tiredness in her voice cuts at his heart, but he can't help but feel angry – how _dare_ she? How _DARE_ she? He forces himself to remain calm, because right now, they need a leader. Right now, they need someone to control the situation, even Lucretia, who had been trying so hard for so many years. It wasn't her job to be a leader, and right this moment she looked acutely like she was teetering on the edge of a breakdown. He'd gotten very familiar with those in the years that the two of them had been alone.

She leaves, instead of letting her family see her collapse, and he doesn't blame her. (he has other things to blame her for.)

So he re-learns being a leader, too, and for just a moment, he's in charge.

Davenport re-learns the starblaster. It's practically his child, and it listens to his touch.

He re-learns the bond engine.

He re-learns his friends.

Taako had needed help in the beginning too, he thinks, watching Taako blast John. It's strange to picture that, now, from this position. He feels so small, so powerless, next to the three fighting forces before him.

And then, when everything is said and done, Davenport re-learns simple things – writing. Talking – because though he can talk now, he can talk just fine and he has no problem with his vocabulary, his voice has been nearly unused for twelve whole years, and it's tiring. He re-learns domesticity, because it's been a full century since he experienced that – and gods, a century is forever. He re-learns reading, taking Lucretia's journals with only the vaguest permission as an act of somewhat founded spite. He re-learns caring.

(Incapable of communicating any other way, Davenport drew a lot during his static time. His art, at least, had improved dramatically.)

He visits Taako, because he figures that he's the last person Taako would mind asking him about that time. Of course, Taako's still going to mind, but it's more embarrassing for Davenport than for him.

Taako leans on the doorframe. “Yea, captain?”

“You can call me Davenport, I don't mind – o-or Andrew. You can call me Andrew.”

“Is that who Barry was yellin about that one time,” Taako mutters. Davenport bites his lip. Which time? He shakes away the thought. “Sure, Drew. Come on in.”

Taako makes him peppermint tea, and he sits down in his expansive kitchen. It's an echo of his time with Lucretia, but not a bad one.

“So what's the haps? Why the visit?”

“Lucretia – she, well, it was a long time ago, and the memory is logically kind of vague, but she mentioned that you had trouble too, at the beginning. And I thought I'd ask about that.”

“At the beginning?” Taako's hands, which had been fiddling with something on the counter, still. “which one?”

“Right after she erased our memories.”

“Oh, uh, that's… I don't remember that.”

“I su-uppose that makes sense. You didn't recognize her when you returned to the bureau.”

His ears are low. Davenport feels bad about asking him this at all.

“I guess, what else was she gonna do, am I rite?”

“There are plenty of other things she could have done,” Davenport quips.

“Yeah,” Taako sighs. It's like he's trying to convince himself she's worth forgiving. “Thanks for stoppin' by, Dav. Wanna stay for dinner?”

“I would love to,” Davenport says. He misses Taako's cooking. He misses a lot of things, now that he knows they exist.

The evening is lovely, if melancholy.

 

Davenport remembers static.

That one evening when Lucretia was crying and talking to her staff about the hunger when she was drunk.

Avi mentioning grand relics.

The boys holding IPRE symbols on candlenights. (Lucretia looked so concerned.)

The lavender sky of the painting in Lucretia's room, the day he woke up.

 

Davenport is in his 400's when he finally visits her again. It takes him a moment to gather himself enough to knock on her door. Last time he was here, he was with Taako, who's mostly forgiven her for her transgressions.

Taako was very close to Lucretia, though. Davenport's more of an aloof character-- after all, he's the captain.

He finally knocks.

Lucretia looks disheveled – Her hair is in her face and she's wearing sweats and a bathrobe. It's not her look, but she also looks healthier than she had last time they talked. He puts his hands on his hips and visibly sizes her up.

“Lucretia.”

“Captain.”

He pointedly doesn't give Lucretia permission to use his given name. She's lost that privilege. Not that he's ever given her that before- Barry was the only IPRE member who even knew his first name, on the ship at least.

“I trust you've been doing well,” he says.

“Too well,” she mutters. “Would you like some tea? I have peppermint.”

“Alright,” he says. “We need to talk.”

She sighs. “I suppose this is about.” She pauses, distracting herself with the tea kettle.

“You did wh. What y-you could.” He folds his hands in front of him.

Lucretia turns to him, surprise written clear across her face. She visibly laments. “You don't forgive me, though.”

“I don't see any reason to forgiv-ve you for erasing my entire life and making group decisions on your own, no. It's been a long time, and I've had a lot of time to think about it, and I think I've moved on.”

Lucretia nods and stares into her cup of coffee. The kettle starts whistling, and she starts, then pours Davenport's tea for him. He takes a sip.

“You were more lucid than I thought you were, weren't you,” Lucretia says. “I, well, I thought about a few incidents, like after wonderland, and they don't make sense if you didn't know something. You could understand us, couldn't you?”

Davenport nods. “The voidfish may have taken away my capacity to communicate, but not my sapience. You seemed happier when I was acting cheerful and silly, so I acted that way.”

“Really? That's all?”

“Yes.”

Lucretia chuckles. “Well. Thank you,” She takes a deep breath, and exhales.

“Of course it didn't help, did it,” Davenport says. “I can't imagine watching the ghost of your old captain and friend act like a child could have possibly helped you.”

“It didn't,” she concedes. “But you've done a lot of other things to help me through those years. Even if it was small.”

“I did my best.” He finishes his tea. “I'll see you another time, I suppose.”

“Yes- yes, do come visit, if you, uh. If you want to.”

He slides off the chair. “I will.”

**Author's Note:**

> working on 2 fics right now, one of which is a big dramatic multi-chapter piece. Probably gonna post the first chapter of the lucretia and taako one first, but the blupjeans one is also (slowly) in the works!  
> Thanks for reading! Sometimes I just get ideas and have to write them.  
> also here's a thing I drew!
> 
> I drew the left page with my left hand and the right page with my right hand because im a fucking showoff lol


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